When nurse and fledgling pilot Lucinda Rhodes hires guitar-playing private detective Rolly Waters to track down a Stratocaster guitar owned by her deceased father, Rolly is thrilled to take on her case, especially when he learns the guitar’s original owner may have been Jimi Hendrix. But Gerry Rhodes’s reckless personal history leads to more questions than Rolly and Lucinda have bargained for when San Diego Police detective Bonnie Hammond opens an investigation into his death.

A photograph of deceased soul singer Otis Sparks leads Rolly to Roger Sledge, a predatory rock'n'roll impresario who also happens to own an impressive guitar collection, but Sledge’s recording studio at the edge of the Gillespie airfield is guarded by menacing Russian gangsters. Murky financial dealings between Sledge, his aspiring pop star wife Svetlana, and the mob’s aging boss, Dmitri Lemotov, hint at a larger conspiracy. Shortly after a mysterious figure defaces the entrance to Sledge’s studio with the mysterious letters PJL, FBI agents arrive at Rolly’s house and advise him against any further investigation.

Rolly finds an old cassette by Otis Sparks in Gerry Rhodes’s personal effects, with a recording that bears an eerie resemblance to a hit song by country music star Ruby Dean, who was once married to, and managed by, Roger Sledge. Rolly interviews Sparks's sister, Mavis Worrell, a professor of African-American studies who blames Roger Sledge for the events leading to her brother's death. She matches the description of the woman Gerry Rhodes was seen with in a bar owned by Lemotov, but Worrell denies any connection. 

Rolly arranges a meeting with the reclusive Ruby Dean, an old acquaintance who confirms his suspicions about the cassette tape, as well as rumors about Roger Sledge’s abusive behavior. As Rolly and Lucinda move closer to locating her father’s guitar, they realize the Hendrix Stratocaster has become the ultimate prize in a dangerous and elaborate shell game. Can they beat the odds and stay alive long enough to win?